


Illogical

by lobsterkaijin



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Sleepy Cuddles, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 07:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20774942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobsterkaijin/pseuds/lobsterkaijin
Summary: There's only one reason he's awake, and that's because he's cold. There is no other reason. None.





	Illogical

As a concept, sleep is logical, facilitates learning, sifts through unnecessary debris and discards of irreverent memories. Sleep is useful, those who go without quickly lose their sense of spatial awareness, their sense of self, their sense of existence, and death comes knocking on their door after eleven days. Less important than water, where death follows after just three days, but more important than food, where death delays three weeks. In as little as three to four days without sleep, deprivation creeps through the crevices and finds a black hole to leech into, settles in a slumberless sadness, and the hallucinations haunt the hallways.

There are plenty of reasons for sleep to evade his grasp. Dehydration, hunger, noise and light pollution — all logical reasons. Anxiety, fear, an aching heart — illogical, yet that much more frustrating than the logical. Not as easily dealt with, failure more times than he can count. If only it were as simple as a bodily craving. Nothing is ever simple science with him, as much as he touts otherwise. The world around them may be, but the body, the mind; there are things science cannot solve. This is one of them.

Senkū Ishigami is cold.

It’s winter. Not his first, but colder than the last. Huddled under a fortress of blankets, and yet the chill, with needle precision and wolf’s howl, rips through the fabric and hooks its claws into his bones, replaces all his blood with ice, hardens his body to steel. The wind cries outside, a shriek piercing his ears. It’s accusatory, banging at the windows, the doors, burrowing beneath the floorboards, begging to be let in, given recompense from the storm chasing it. It doesn’t realize it’s become the very same wolf that hunted it, and now it hunts for others. He winces when a particularly high whistle tears into his brain.

Cold is a physical state, the absence of heat, and these blankets just aren’t enough to compensate. His heart is painfully small and human, and can only provide the heat of a painfully small human. Against the agonizingly large winter, his little heart is a candle in the wind. The snow would snuff him out eventually. If only his body could behave logically! Exhaustion should’ve put him to sleep. He wouldn’t need so much heat if he could sleep, if his metabolism dropped and breathing slowed.

But this cold is not logical. It is not just a physical ailment, but one of his heart and mind. Cold is also a state of the heart, an absence of love, and a state of the mind, an absence of comfort. It’s enough to bring a wan smile to his face, a mistake, since his chattering teeth make his gums sore. Since when was he so lonely a soul that he aches the minute his companions are within his reach? Has it really been so long? He’d been alone for 3700 years, and he’d been away from them for quite some time after. He should be used to this.

This whole damn situation isn’t logical. It’s colder than last year. He hasn’t slept for three days. His bones and muscles and joints hurt, and so does his heart and his head. He missed them, he really missed them. Oh, for goodness sake.

“This is embarrassing.”

He says it again and again, because at some point, he’s got to turn around and get back to bed, right? He’ll stop, realize what he’s doing, vomit back up the pride he’d swallowed, and go back, deal with this on his own. If anyone saw him now, he’d throw himself out the window and let himself slip into a hypothermic coma. Ugh, look at what the winter has reduced him to! He’s waddling around in at least four layers of furs, tripping and stumbling in the dark, and jumping when there’s a loud slam in another room. It’s nothing, no one’s awake, there’s no one here except him, Yuzuriha, and the big oaf.

As soon as the thought crosses his mind, a distant but forceful wind melts the cold right out of him. It’s just a second, too short for his liking, and then the chill is coming back screeching, angry at his audacity, but he groans and pulls the fabric over his head. Of _ course. _ Those two, his friends, his comrades, his… yeah, whatever else they are to him, _ they _ are what he wants most right now. It’s his third night without sleep. He must be delirious. Clearly he isn’t any warmer than before.

Taiju’s room isn’t any warmer, no surprise there, yet he’s snoring soundly, because Einstein forbid he ever be disturbed by his environment. Now wait just one second, where did he get all of those extra blankets? Senkū hobbles around him to see a smaller form huddled close to his side. O-ho, what’s this? Yuzuriha’s here too? 

On any other night, he’d give the big oaf a whack on the head and tease him about it until steam shot out of his ears. _ ‘How scandalous!’ _ he’d say. He could see it now, Yuzuriha’s face flushing bright cherry, and Taiju’s wild gesticulating, because how could Senkū think he’d ever _ do _ such a thing, that’s improper and dishonourable and Taiju Ōki would never make a move on a lady like that without her permission! Senkū has to stifle his snickering where he stands. Now _ that’d _ be fun.

As he is now, he makes a note to do it in the morning when he could feel his toes again and when his breath wasn’t forming icicles in front of him. Senkū settles down beside Taiju. Though the cold begins to wane, it isn’t chased away completely, stubborn and sticking to his hands and feet. His friend beside him doesn’t react to the extra weight piled on top of him, not even a stutter in his breath. Since he’s asleep, he won’t mind Senkū stealing even more of his heat. Senkū shuffles even closer to him.

Taiju wraps his arm around Senkū, mumbling something about Senkū being sneaky, and Senkū’s heart leaps into his throat. No way, has the idiot been awake this whole time? Although the shivering has stopped, now he’s got an entirely new problem — his heart is beating a mile a minute. How is he supposed to sleep _ now? _ Stupid oaf, mind your manners!

“Senkū?”

Senkū holds his breath.

Yuzuriha lifts her head, blinks the bleariness of hibernation from her eyes. “Coulda sworn...” She wipes her face, looks around, then lays her head down onto Taiju’s shoulder. “I wonder if he’s cold too.” It takes just a moment until her shuffling stops, her breathing slows, and she’s fallen back into the arms of sleep.

Winter scrapes at the windows and walls with white warnings and wails, but unlike Senkū’s room, it is trapped on the outside. There is no crack, no crevice, no crumbling infrastructure it can enter through, no prey it can hunt, no wolf it can kill. Taiju’s body gives him strength of heart, and Yuzuriha’s spirit gives him peace of mind. The howling is far away, so far away, that he is certain he can admit it now in private, just loud enough that he can hear himself say it, but still quiet, so that whatever sound leaks in can cover it up.

“I missed you guys.”

His heart aches, not in frightened hesitation, but in a patient confidence, because now that they’re back, now that they’re here and they’re safe, and he can touch and see them, he has no need to jump to the worst conclusion, his heart can afford to wait, not to delay an undesirable outcome, but because it knows that what awaits it is love, and there’s no rush. His thoughts quell, not in a lonely silence, but in a sated peace, because now that they’re back, now that they’re here and they’re safe, and he can hear their sighs and feel their life, he has no need to plan for the worst fate, his mind can afford to rest, not out of exhaustion, not to give up, but because it knows that they are there to back him, and there’s no reason to fear.

Logically, it’s the snowstorm keeping him awake, and the lack of sleep that makes his eyes sting. The shivering is for the cold, and the lack of sleep, probably to keep him from dying. He’s delirious, that’s what three days of sleeplessness does. He’s emotional because he’s delirious and his eyes sting because he’s cold and sweaty from the shivering and definitely not because he’s just so happy to have these two here again.

And it’s definitely not because they responded with, “We missed you too.”


End file.
